In this speech, the author considers how the authority dimension of school organization may be related to students' lack of attention to long-range goals and to some of their motivational problems in the classroom. First, the author reviews how the distinction between short-run and long-run returns is similar to familiar distinctions made by organizational theorists concerned with control mechanisms and by educational psychologists interested in types of student motivation. Second, he describes two organizational routes to activate long-range goals as a source of control or motivation: recruitment or selection and socialization. He reviews the arguments that most schools are at a great disadvantage compared to other types of organizations in appealing to long-range goals. Third, he offers some ideas on how variations in the schools' authority structure may be related to the strengthening of long-range goals as a source of student motivation for learning activities. He uses some recent evidence from school surveys to argue that the types of academic choices provided to students may be an important organizational feature to make students less influenced by immediate responses from peers and more attentive to information about the long-range outcomes of their school work. (Author/IRT)